Then You Die
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: [Oneshot, crossover w. Final Fantasy VIII] Being a hero is difficult, but sometimes, Harry just needs to be told what an idiot he can be.


**Summary**: (Oneshot, crossover w. FF8) Being a hero is difficult, but sometimes, Harry just needs to be told what an idiot he can be.  
**Warnings**: Mention of Seifer/Squall, lots of swearing courtesy of Seifer. And honestly I don't remember many details from HBP, having only read it once when it first came out, so if Aberforth is supposed to be somewhere else…well, tough.

My growing irritation with each successive book (mostly the last two) has made me lose count of how many times I've wanted to bitch-slap Harry.

* * *

**Then You Die  
**_**Hades' Phoenix**_

Winter had left a thick layer of snow over Hogsmeade, turning the roads to slush and making even a quick trip to the mailbox an adventure of being soaked and freezing. The skies were the oppressive grey of wet slate, and had been for several weeks now.

The streets were largely deserted except for the bravest of Hogsmeade's residents, and Harry Potter trudged towards the Hog's Head with his head bowed against the wind and his icy hands numbly pulling his cloak as close to his body as possible. He limped slightly, nearly stumbling on a few patches of slick ice and mud, and exhaustion made his limbs clumsy as stone.

He finally did make it to the Hog's Head, however, and managed to pull open the door with fingers nearly turned purple. When released from its catch, the door blew open and banged against the wall with a flurry of snow, momentarily drawing the attention of the bar's patrons before they pointedly looked away. One's business was one's business in this place, after all, and no one appreciated nosiness.

Harry heavily made his way to the bar, where a man with blue eyes that looked out of place in the dim establishment for their brightness waited with a sympathetic smile.

"Aye, boy, you look half-dead," Aberforth murmured. "Sit down, I'll get you a cuppa."

"Thanks," Harry rasped, throat sore from the cold air as he dropped onto a bar stool. To his left was another man, slumped over a heavy tankard and with slicked-back blonde hair that nearly made Harry's heart stop until he remembered that Malfoy had not been seen for a year. The stranger wore a trenchcoat that might have been grey, though wet and mud made it difficult to tell.

"Here you go," said Aberforth, returning with a stein of butterbeer. Harry smiled his thanks and reminded himself not to drink so quickly that he choked, relishing the warmth that spread from his stomach throughout his limbs. The old barkeeper patted Harry's shoulder heavily, immeasurable sadness in his cornflower eyes. "Keep your spirits up, boy. No matter how dark everything seems, there's always a light."

Aberforth's words made something in Harry's mouth turn sour, and he kept his eyes lowered until the man moved away to the next customer.

"Optimistic bullshit," the blonde man next to him muttered into his tankard.

"He's only trying to help," Harry said softly in the old man's defense.

"Don't they say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?" The man gracelessly thumped his tankard onto the countertop, the movement shifting his long coat so that Harry could see some kind of strange, bladed weapon. It was large and, though well-used, also meticulously polished and cared-for. Harry bit his tongue, pushing away the curiosity that tended to get him into so much trouble.

"Well, when you're already _in_ Hell, I don't suppose it matters much," Harry replied dryly, and the man snorted.

"This place, Hell? Hyne's fucking balls, kid, this place is like getting laid by a hot chick. Or Leonhart. Fan-_fucking­_-tastic."

Harry was not sure whether he should be offended or not. Perhaps, normally, he would have simply ignored this obviously drunk asshole, but he was wet, and aching, and _exhausted_. "Then why're you in here getting wasted if everything's so bloody great?

The man looked at him with sharp sea-green eyes, disturbingly clear despite the amount of alcohol he must have consumed. "'Cause sometimes, when the world fucks you over, all you can do is give it the bird and laugh in its ugly face."

Then he drained the tankard and barked, "Yo, barkeep. Hit me."

Aberforth complied, giving Harry a concerned look when the brunette stared at his butterbeer quietly. Eventually the older man went away, and Harry said softly, "What if you can't do that?"

"The hell're you talking about? There ain't _nothing_ that can stop you from doing jack-shit except you."

"What if I told you that everyone expects me to save the world?"

"Been there, done that, didn't get a fucking t-shirt," he said airily. "Shit, and _I _was the one trying to destroy it."

Harry blinked, and decided to disregard that last remark. The stranger's blasé words had left a bitter taste in his mouth. "I'm not kidding," he snapped.

"What, and I am? Look, kid, you ain't the only poor son of a bitch that's had fate drag him around on his ass."

"I'm seventeen and they're sending me out to kill people," Harry whispered.

Something in the man's demeanor softened, just a little. "Lemme tell you a little story, kid. This guy, Leonhart—he was the best goddamn mercenary in our little corner of the world by the time he was your age. Killed enough people to populate a whole country of church cemeteries, almost all for the sake of money, and fuck me if he _ever _cried over it. He was a fucking icicle, a psycho, and it was the saddest damn thing I've ever seen. I knew him when we were kids, see, and I _knew _that somewhere in that pretty head of his he was falling apart, even if on the outside he could look death in the eye and shrug.

"Me, I didn't let _no one _tell me what to do unless I wanted to, and got the same results."

Harry's brows were pulled together in a little frown as he mentally rewound what the stranger had already said. "Were you and this Leonhart…?"

"Fuck-buddies?" He leered at the brunette. "Or maybe you were looking for the word 'lovers.' Same fucking thing. Only when one or both of us got carried away during a fight. I've still got scars from that vicious little cocksucker."

Harry took a deep draught of his butterbeer to hide his blush, and continued speaking. "But…it's not fair. I have to kill someone who's _decades_ better than I am. And if I don't become the murderer, then _I'm_ the murder-ee."

"That's it?" the stranger said with incredulity. "_That's_ what got your princess-panties all in a twist? Hell, kid, that's easy, you don't even have to worry about complicated consequences with the predator-or-prey deal. You don't strike me as the type to just lie down and die no matter how much of a pussy you sound like, which means you have to kill this bastard, whoever he is."

Harry still was not sure if he should be offended.

"And you becoming a murderer?" He shrugged carelessly. "That's a relative term, kid, usually resolved for the people society hates anyway. There are worse things than dying, and if you don't know that, then you're a fucking cowardly retard."

The blonde man rooted through his pockets and dumped a handful of coins onto the bar. Mixed with random Knuts and Sickles were smaller coins with a square hole punched through their centers and strange characters stamped around the edges, and he sorted through them with muttered curses.

"Hyne's balls, what the hell were those little demons talking about, '_gil_ isn't a viable monetary system' my _ass_—"

Recognizing the snide tone to be an imitation of Gringott's goblins, Harry suppressed a smile. Finally, the man found what he wanted and dumped the Knuts and Sickles in a lazy pile on the counter for his bill, shoved his hands in the pockets of his grey trousers, and fully faced the boy for the first time. He had narrow sea-green eyes, and Harry could not help but follow the twisting scar that ran from over the man's left brow, across his nose, to his right cheekbone.

"Leonhart has one, too," the stranger smirked, seeing where Harry's attention was focused, and traced a finger over his face in a mirror-image of the scar. "We may have known each other since we wet the bed, but I've lost count of how many times we've tried to kill each other. Too different—he did shit because he was expected to, and I _didn't_ do shit _because_ people told me to. He became the hero everyone wanted to bend over for, I was the villain whose name scared the crap outta little kids, and some grown men, too. But hey, you know why I don't care?"

Harry was afraid to know, and afraid to believe that maybe this was not all a drunken man's tale.

The stranger leaned closer, bringing with him the smell of whiskey. "Leonhart might have gotten the chick, literally and proverbially, but _I _had fun doing it. Better to be rule in hell than serve in heaven and all that shit."

He stood up and gave a rakish, daredevil smile, the kind that could charm crotchety old ladies and icy lion hearts. "My point is, kid, whatever fate or destiny or the fucking horoscope in the paper tells you to do doesn't matter. In the end, _everyone_ gets screwed over before they die, so you might as well stop your bitching and make the most of it."

Then the stranger turned and left without a wave or a goodbye, and Harry gazed down at his butterbeer for a long moment. When Aberforth asked if he was all right, the Boy-Who-Lived banged the stein on the bar and ordered the strongest scotch in the house.


End file.
